Tuesday, July 10, 2007

.A person searching for evidence to support arguments on the limits of representative democracy could do worse than to point to some of the people whom it has let near positions of power in the United States recently.

John Bolton is a case in point.

When the Bush administration belatedly started to engage with the North Korean regime here's what he had to say:

This Pyongyang visit symbolises the full return of Clinton-era, bilateral negotiations with North Korea. The Bush administration has effectively ended where North Korea policy is concerned, replaced for the next 18 months by a caretaker government of bureaucrats, technocrats and academics.

How terrible. I mean the Bush 'Administration' were doing such a good job on the Korean peninsular after all.

Anyhow, here, according to Mark Leon Goldberg, is what has happened since Bush 'Administration' 'policies' were ceased:

the reclusive government of Kim Jong Il has taken actual, concrete steps to dismantle the plutonium producing facility at Yongbyon. On June 28, the North Koreans let an International Atomic Energy Agency assessment team visit Yongbyon. This was the first time since 2002 that IAEA inspectors had been allowed inside North Korea.

Before the team left the country, the government even struck a technical agreement that would allow the IAEA to oversee the shutdown of the facility. This morning, the IAEA board of governors met in Vienna to approve the agreement and authorised a new verification mission to North Korea.